When Typhoon Hato struck Macau in 2017, it exposed a vulnerability that no seawall could have fixed: delayed warnings gave residents too little time to evacuate. The catastrophic flooding that followed triggered public anger sharp enough to cost the meteorological bureau director his job—but it also sparked a transformation that would reshape how the city prepares for the next storm.
Unlike many coastal cities that respond to typhoon risk by building higher defenses, Macau chose a different path. Rather than constructing massive seawalls and floodgates, researchers at Science Tokyo found that the city dramatically strengthened its resilience through what experts call "nonstructural" measures—systems that rely on communication, coordination and preparation instead of concrete barriers. These softer approaches proved unexpectedly powerful.
The turning point came immediately after Hato. Macau's government began issuing higher-level typhoon warnings earlier in the threat window, giving residents precious extra hours to prepare and leave vulnerable areas. A separate color-coded storm-surge warning system was introduced with five distinct alert levels, making it visually clear what level of danger to expect. The city installed color-coded hazard indication poles across vulnerable neighborhoods so residents could see exactly where flood risk was highest. Government evacuation patrols fanned out to encourage people to leave, backed by subsidies that helped businesses install deployable flood barriers.
Professor Hiroshi Takagi from Science Tokyo's School of Environment and Society led the study examining Macau's response to three major typhoons over the past decade: Hato in 2017, Mangkhut in 2018, and Ragasa in 2025. His team conducted resident interviews after each storm, including 28 residents surveyed following Ragasa specifically about how well the evacuation measures worked. The results, published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, reveal the quiet power of systems that put information and trust first.
About two-thirds of residents reported that the government's response during Typhoon Ragasa had improved significantly compared with previous storms. They noticed concrete changes: power outages lasted shorter, evacuation instructions arrived faster, drainage pumps appeared in flood-prone areas, portable floodgates deployed more smoothly, and government cleanup crews arrived more quickly. These aren't dramatic interventions, but they represent a fundamental shift in how the city approaches catastrophe—not by trying to hold the water out, but by ensuring people can escape it.
What makes Macau's approach particularly notable is how directly it contradicts the more expensive playbook used by neighboring regions. In Japan, coastal protection typically emphasizes massive infrastructure: towering seawalls, sophisticated floodgates, complex dike systems. Macau's government chose otherwise. Since Hato, no major seawalls have been built. Instead, the city relies on earlier warnings, government-led evacuations, water-level monitoring stations, portable floodgates stored in advance, mangrove afforestation projects and—perhaps most importantly—the collective memory of residents who lived through flooding and knew precisely what they were preparing for.
For other coastal cities facing similar typhoon exposure, Macau's experience carries a clear message: resilience doesn't only come from engineering. It comes from a government willing to issue warnings faster, from systems that communicate risk clearly, and from a public that trusts those systems enough to act on them. As typhoons grow more intense with climate change, that combination of speed, clarity and trust may matter more than any wall.